Portage la Prairie residents are embracing the city’s new automated garbage collection system, but many now wonder what to do with their old plastic trash bins.
Christine Major, General Manager of Portage and District Recycling Inc. (PDRI), offers practical solutions for reusing, repurposing, or recycling these bins, while also shedding light on the potential future of automated recycling pickup and its challenges.
Major encourages residents to get creative before discarding their old bins. She suggests several reuse options that keep the plastic out of the landfill longer.
"Some of the things that you can do to reuse your old garbage bin would be that you could use it for leaves. You could use it if you have excess garbage that needs to go to the landfill. You could use it to collect rainwater. There's a wide variety of different items you could do with your bin to reuse it," Major states.
Beyond personal reuse, Major highlights a community-minded option: donating bins to neighbours in the surrounding Rural Municipality (RM) of Portage la Prairie who aren't part of the new city system and might still find them useful, something many locally have been mentioning on social media.
For bins that can't be reused or repurposed, PDRI offers a dedicated recycling stream. Residents can easily return their old plastic bins.
"We are accepting your old garbage bin at our depot or curbside, so if you would like us to take your garbage bin, we can process it here with our plastic recycling. So you can either put it out on your curb with your recycling, or you can bring it down to our depot and place it in our blue bins twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week," Major explains.
She adds that she considers the new system a great move for the city of Portage la Prairie.
Automated future may pose challenges
The efficiency and tidiness of the new black garbage cart system have sparked interest in a similar automated approach for recycling collection. Major strongly supports this idea for both the City and the RM.
"I think that the city of Portage and the RM of Portage would benefit from an automated recycling pickup as well, and that is definitely something on our horizon that we want to be a. Not only is it safer for our staff to be out, but it also creates a beautiful space for our community, with rubbish not blowing around," Major says.
She confirms it would boost efficiency; however, she anticipates increased recycling volumes could necessitate changes: "I think that with the volume that we would receive from recycling, we would potentially need increased pickups."
Volume and contamination concerns
Implementing an automated recycling cart system presents specific hurdles compared to garbage.
PDRI's internal data shows recycling streams collected via cart systems elsewhere experience significantly higher contamination rates (30-40%) compared to Portage's current manual bin system (less than 5%). Contamination occurs when non-recyclable materials or dirty items are placed in recycling carts.
Major also identifies potential overflow issues. Large households with only one garbage cart might contaminate the recycling stream by placing excess garbage in the recycling cart, and vice versa if recycling carts are insufficient. While carts are cost-effective for curbside collection, they may not be for processing due to contamination sorting costs.
PDRI would propose solutions like offering residents the option to purchase a second recycling cart or increasing pickup frequency beyond the current 10-day cycle.
"Having 2 recycling carts for larger families would eliminate the overflow of recycling from going into the garbage stream," Major notes, emphasizing PDRI's commitment to landfill diversion.
However, she stresses the final decision rests with the City and RM, acknowledging the significant cost of the bins despite their 10-year lifespan.
To combat contamination, if carts are adopted, Major says that ideally, they would implement an audit system. This could involve camera systems on collection trucks for random checks.
An action plan would start with educational notes left on bins with minor contamination, escalating to a three-strike rule for repeated significant offences, with strikes potentially leading to bin removal. Contamination thresholds would focus on significant non-recyclable materials or excessive food residue impacting the load.
"I think that having an automated recycling would go hand in hand with the garbage as well," Major concludes, viewing it as a natural progression for the community's waste management, provided contamination challenges are proactively addressed.
As residents adapt their waste habits with the new system, finding new uses for old bins or recycling them responsibly are key steps in Portage la Prairie's evolving environmental strategy.
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